The Relationship Between Ian Curtis’s Music and His Epilepsy 投稿類別：英文寫作類 篇名： The Relationship Between Ian Curtis’s Music and His Epilepsy 作者： 張盛媛。國立台灣師範大學附屬高級中學。高三 1372 班 指導老師： 賴香如老師 1 The Relationship Between Ian Curtis’s Music and His Epilepsy Ⅰ. Introduction A. Motivation In 2013, my guitar teacher introduced the band Joy Division to me. I was shocked by their music at first because of Ian Curtis’s low voice, the strange melody, and the dark atmosphere through the whole album. To be honest, I didn’t really like their music at that time. But my guitar teacher told me that The Killers1, which is my favorite band, had covered one of Joy Division’s song Shadowplay for the soundtrack of Ian’s biographical film Control. Since then, I started to listen to their music, search for their stories and thus became one of their fans. I’m fascinated with post-punk music, and Joy Division is the representative of this genre. In the summer of 2015, I finally had a chance to watch the film Control and found it touching and inspiring. On the other day, my twin sister and I unexpectedly found an original text book called Unknown Pleasures—inside Joy Division, written by Peter Hook, who is exactly the bass player of Joy Division. Then I came up with the idea that it might be cool to write a research paper about this band. And I’m also interested in psychology, so it turned out to be a research includes music and Ian Curtis’s mental problems caused by his epilepsy. B. Purpose of the research The paper aims to understand Joy Division and Ian’s epilepsy more deeply and thoroughly. As a lead singer and guitarist of HSNU’s Hot Music Club, I am intrigued how emotions affect creation. Also, I want to extend post-punk music to other students and Taiwanese people. Last but not least, I hope this research would do help to those musicians who have the similar experience with Ian Curtis, including families and friends around them, who could understand their mental problems more and help them in the right way. C. Methods & Procedure I would start my paper with Ian Curtis’s life background, trying to explore what shaped his personality qualities, which will help clarify the reasons for his music styles. The depiction of his life is based on two reliable books Unknown Pleasures—inside Joy Division, written by Ian’s bandmate, Peter Hook and Touching from a Distance, written by Ian’s widow, Deborah Curtis. And the biographical film Control, which was also produced based on Touching from a 1The Killers: An American rock band from Las Vegas, Nevada. 2 The Relationship Between Ian Curtis’s Music and His Epilepsy Distance. I also plan to analyze some lyrics to understand Ian’s thoughts about his life, such as She’s Lost Control and Isolation. Then I would search for related information about epilepsy and psychology through books, magazines, and the Internet. Last, organize, compare and analyze these information to interpret the relationship between Ian Curtis’s musical opus and his epilepsy. Ⅱ. Thesis A. Ian Curtis’s biographic sketch and Joy Division’s background Ian Curtis was born on July 15th 1956 in Stretford, Manchester. He admitted to the King’s School, Macclesfield; while there he met Deborah (Debbie) Woodruff. Debbie was the girlfriend of Ian’s friend Tony Nuttal. When she and Tony split, she agreed to go on a date with Ian. They became engaged on April 17th, 1974 and got married in 1975. He was taking jobs in the Employment Exchange after his marriage, which helped people to get jobs. Still dreaming of a career in the music business, he placed an advert in the music press. It was all started from the Sex Pistols’2 gigs. For the young music lovers at that time, they were the index of youth’s rebellion and punk rock. Bernard Summer and Peter Hook decided to form a band on their way home in the night after the Pistols’ gig. “We decided to follow the rules of punk… Rule one：act like the Sex Pistols. Rule two：look like the Sex Pistols. One Guitar, one bass.”(p.37, Peter Hook, Unknown Pleasures—inside Joy Division) On December 9th, 1976, the night of the Pistols’ third gig in The Electric Circus, they met Ian, who was a guy with“hate”on his coat. “We wanted a singer and a drummer but Ian had a drummer and guitarist, so— we couldn’t join up, even though we desperately needed a singer and he desperately needed a bassist. We had to follow the rules.”(p.47, Peter Hook, Unknown Pleasures—inside Joy Division) But before long, Ian’s two members left and he ended up joining Summer and 2Sex Pistols: An English punk rock band from London in 1971, which is seen as one of the pioneers of the punk movement in the 1970s in UK. 3 The Relationship Between Ian Curtis’s Music and His Epilepsy Hook. They found the drummer, Stephen Morris at last. Inspired by David Bowie3’s song Warszawa, the band was named Warsaw at first, but the name Warsaw had become a barrier that stopped them from getting gigs because of another short-lived punk group Warsaw Pakt. They later changed their name into Joy Division in late 1977 for fear of being confused with Warsaw Pakt. And it was Ian who suggested the name. He found it in a book he was reading, House of Dolls4, by Ka-Tzetnik 135633. “‘Joy Division’was the name given to groups of Jewish women kept in the concentration camps for the sexual pleasure of the Nazi soldiers. The oppressed, not the oppressors. Which in punky,‘No Future’sort of the way was exactly what we were trying to say.”(p.5, Peter Hook, Unknown Pleasures—inside Joy Division) Their self-released 1978 debut EP, An Ideal for Living caught the attention of the Manchester television personality Tony Wilson, who signed them to his independent label, Factory Records. Joy Division’s debut album Unknown Pleasures, recorded with the producer Martin Hannett, was released on June 15th, 1979. This album received sustained critical acclaim as a pioneering post-punk record. And its white-on-black radio waves cover, designed by Peter Saville 5 , has become well-known. As the band's popularity grew, Ian was diagnosed with epilepsy on January 23rd, 1979. He found it increasingly difficult to perform at live concerts because he might occasionally collapsed into seizures. Moreover, his marriage was falling apart because he had an extramarital affair with a Belgian journalist Annik Honore. He met her during gigs in August 1979. All of the above worsened his severe depression and eventually led to his tragic ending of committing suicide at home on May 18th, 1980. It was the day before the band was scheduled to leave for America. Ian was cremated on May 23rd at Macclesfield Crematorium. Inscribed in his grave stone is Love Will Tear Us Apart, the title of Joy Division’s first chart hit. Two months later, Joy Division’s second album Closer was released on July 18th. In 1995, Curtis's widow Deborah published a biography of Ian—Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division and in 2012, the bassist Peter Hook published a book entitled Unknown Pleasures: inside Joy Division in the UK. His life and death have also been dramatized in the films 24 Hour Party People(2002) and Control(2007). The former mainly presents a fictionalized account of the rise and 3David Bowie: An English singer, songwriter, and actor. His music has significant influences on rock and roll for decades. 4House of Dolls: A novel about the Nazi’s concentration camp by Ka-tzetnik 135633 in 1955. 5Peter Saville: An English graphic designer and art director, best known for the record sleeves he designed for Factory Records. 4 The Relationship Between Ian Curtis’s Music and His Epilepsy fall of Factory Records, while the latter depicts Ian’s life based on Deborah’s book Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division and Debbie served as a co-producer on the film. Hook voiced his comments in his book, “The guy in Control, Sam Riley, played him as being much more arty and conventionally pretty than he was in real life, whereas Sean Harris in 24 Hour Party People had a bit more of the real-life Ian’s edginess and intensity.”(p.45, Peter Hook, Unknown Pleasures—inside Joy Division) B. Evaluation and Analyses of Ian Curtis’s music a. Features of Ian Curtis’s music opus and stage performance Ian was the main lyricist of Joy Division. He got inspired by the fragments of his life, the people he met, and his emotional fluctuation, or mood swings. The imagery and words were revolving around coldness, pressure, darkness, crisis, failure, collapse, and loss of control. The atmosphere of silence, death and fright permeates through his music. As for the structure and form, the abundance of repetition is the feature of Ian’s lyrics, without obvious chorus. “It has no chorus, which is something that I think Ian was very, very good at－the way he played with the structure of the lyric but without ever losing what it was about the song that makes it strong.” (p.256, Peter Hook, Unknown Pleasures—inside Joy Division) Also, unlike most of the rock bands, the bass lines in Joy Division’s music are very clear and heavy.